On most Stack Exchange sites except this one, the 'create new tags' privilege is awarded at 300 reputation points, but here on Stack Overflow, it's only awarded at 1500 reputation points. Why is it that here, it's only awarded at 1500 instead of 300?

The obvious answer is Stack Overflow is 5 times better than all the other sites
– NathanOliverApr 21 '16 at 15:33

Do you mean five times better or five times bigger
– John MiliterApr 21 '16 at 15:35

12

Well, you know what they say... bigger is better.
– BoltClock♦Apr 21 '16 at 15:35

1

Even if it's five times bigger (or better), why should you need five times as much reputation?
– John MiliterApr 21 '16 at 15:40

1

Because it is five times easier to reach a certain level of reputation.
– GlorfindelApr 21 '16 at 15:55

13

Beacuse even with that crappy new tags need to get cleaned up on a daily basis...
– MatApr 21 '16 at 15:58

3

Most likely this has to do with the size of the user pool and how long it takes to gain rep. Just looking at the 1 rep users SO is 12 times bigger than the next biggest site. If you had to wait for 1500 rep on the smaller sites there would be so few people that could add tags. Again using next biggest site as a comparison they have about 2000-3000 people that could add tags if they used 1500 rep. On SO using my same guestimation there are 169,000+ people that can add tags.
– NathanOliverApr 21 '16 at 15:59

13

@John Stack Overflow already has 1319 pages of tags, and we put some significant efforts into removing the already existing and oftenly misused unuseful tags. So why do you think we need more being created by ragtag and bobtail (sorry).
– πάντα ῥεῖApr 21 '16 at 16:01

1 Answer
1

Stack Overflow already has 1319 pages of tags, and we put some significant efforts into removing the already existing and oftenly misused unuseful tags. So why do you think we need more being created by ragtag and bobtail (sorry)?

As mentioned in comments we have a big user pool and want to throttle tag creation for a certain level of trust. Other sites with way smaller audience would suffer from such restriction, and may be unnecessarily prevent the creation of useful tags.